Some historians worry that the advent of the Internet and the transience of electronic documents may damage the long-term historical record. Ironically, the Internet itself will likely be one of the best-documented social watersheds in world history. Besides the Pew project, both UCLA Carnegie-Mellon University have major ongoing field studies, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration uses census data to track the evolution of the Internet.
The Pew project is unusual in that a journalist, rather than an academic researcher, heads it. “It was designed as a very opportunistic research project,” says Rainie, now three years into his role as Executive Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “It’s a young technology that’s changing all the time. When it was funded, there was no such thing as Napster. No one had any idea how much damage viruses could cause, and so forth. And that was one of the reasons to hire a journalist to do this.”
The reportorial nature of the project is evident in the more than 35 research papers that Pew has already released, based on random telephone polls and lately enhanced by e-mail surveys and actual focus groups. The topics began with some generality–who was using the Internet and how much–and then began digging into issues ranging from church use and community involvement to attitudes about downloading music and the online activities of the elderly.
The research is filled with little surprises: three-quarters of English-speaking Asian-American adults are active Internet users-much higher than any other racial group. Or the finding that on any given day, more Americans are looking for medical information on line than are talking to doctors, nurses or visiting clinics and hospitals. But Rainie says that what strikes him most about the past three years is the complete contrast between the commercial story and the social story. “When NASDAQ tanked, it was assumed that the Internet had outlived its usefulness. But the user side was completely different: it’s a story of continuing growth. People love this stuff and they’re doing it more and more.”
Perhaps the most intriguing of the Pew reports look at children and young adults, in both social situations and school. It is clear that the Internet, with a combination of chat, e-mail and instant messaging, is an utterly integral part of teen social life. One in five teens surveyed had asked for a date in instant messaging; one in 10 had broken up via IM. “My gut feeling,” says Rainie, “is that kids are going through more relationships than did my generation; it’s easier to ask for a date and easier to break up online.”
In high school the use of the Internet is itself a social occasion–83 percent of online teens have gone online in a group clustered around the computer, often instant messaging with a similar group at another computer. Not surprisingly, over 60 percent of frequent teen Internet users think that the Web helps enhance friendships. Indeed, sharing e-mail or IM passwords has become a symbol of closeness; more than a fifth of the teens, both boys and girls, say they’ve done this–although some later regret the intimacy when best friends turn worst enemy.
Those same kids, as reflected in the Pew report on education released last week, are extremely sophisticated about how they use the Internet for school. They employ it in multiple ways, ranging from the obvious-research (and plagiarism) for school papers–to the less obvious: as a “virtual locker.” In the study, kids tell the researchers they e-mail all of their homework to themselves, so it’s stored online where they can access it from anywhere. “Disks are annoying,” one high school boy told the researchers. “They crack in your bag and stuff.”
Several Pew studies give ample evidence of teen multitasking–using the telephone, computer and television simultaneously. As one girl, 17, tells the researchers: “I get bored if it’s not all going at once, because everything has gaps–waiting for someone to respond to an IM, waiting for a website to come up, commercials on TV, etc.” Those multitasking teens are already clearly well beyond their teachers’ ability to show them much about the Web; indeed, in the recent Pew study most of the kids reported that their school assignments seemed to show little understanding that the students themselves did so much of their work on the Web.
In any event, when some of those kids grow up and decide to write the social history of the Internet, they will not be short for material. Consider, for example, the online reaction to September 11: not only did both the Pew Project and Carnegie-Mellon do immediate research (and publish multiple papers) on how Internet users responded, but another group permanently cached millions of Web pages from the period directly following the attack.
No other technologic turning point has ever had so much contemporaneous study–and the documentation continues. Rainie is now applying for additional funding to continue the Internet and American Life project, this time exploring how the Internet actually changes people’s lives–their health, their spirituality, their understanding of the world. The UCLA and Carnegie-Mellon project continue as well, and more and more scholars are starting new studies.
But there’s plenty of room for research. While observers like to compare the rise of the Internet to that of radio or television, in terms of social impact it will be more like the automobile: a fundamental shift that changes how we work, shop, live, play–even how we meet our mates. “There’s no Unified Field Theory on the role of the Internet in American life yet,” says Rainie. But if such a theory is ever possible, chances are you’ll read it on the Web.
